ROSE HILL, TX (HARRIS COUNTY)

ROSE HILL, TEXAS (Harris County). Rose Hill, also known as Rosehill and Spring Creek, is on Spring Creek and Farm Road 2920 five miles west of Tomball and thirty-five miles northwest of Houston in northern Harris County. The site, known until 1892 as Spring Creek Community, was first settled before 1836 by P. W. Rose, who served on Harrisburg County's first grand jury. German immigrant Johann Heinrich Theisz (Theis), who arrived in 1846 from Galveston, acquired 200 acres of land and began a settlement of Germans. Four German families, including Theisz, founded one of the state's oldest Lutheran congregations, Salem Lutheran Church, at Rosehill in 1852. They later started a school. German language services were held in the church until World War II. A post office operated in Rose Hill from 1852 until 1905, when mail was rerouted to Hufsmith. In the 1880s three general stores, a sawmill, a gristmill, a blacksmith, a wagon maker, a carpenter, and seven cotton gins served area farmers, who principally raised cotton. Shipments were made via the Cypress Top railroad eight miles to the south. The local school had forty-seven pupils and one teacher in 1905. The population of the settlement reached 300 in 1915 but fell in the 1930s to twenty, where it remained until after the war; it was last recorded at 100 in 1947. State highway maps in 1936 showed a factory, a sawmill, two churches, and multiple dwellings at the townsite. More recently, Rose Hill residents were employed in ranching, dairying, and truck farmingor commuted to Tomball, Waller, and Houston from their rural homes. In the 1980s a church and a cemetery remained at the site.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

The Heritage of North Harris County (n.p: North Harris County Branch, American Association of University Women, 1977). Houston Metropolitan Research Center Files, Houston Public Library.